New prostate cancer drug 'extends life'

A new hormone therapy designed to treat advanced prostate cancer has been shown to significantly extend patients' life expectancy.

Enzalutamide was tested in 1,199 patients, all of whom had advanced inoperable prostate cancer that had previously been treated with chemotherapy.

Patients who used the investigational drug had a median survival time of 18.4 months, compared with just 13.6 months for those on a placebo (dummy drug).

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In addition, 43 per cent of enzalutamide users reported improvements in their quality of life, compared with 18 per cent of placebo users.

Dr Howard Scher, co-principal investigator at the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in the US, said that the trial data represent an 'important body of clinical evidence' on a new drug 'that can prolong the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer'.

The phase-III trial is published in the New England Journal of Medicine and was jointly-led by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

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Professor Alan Ashworth, chief executive of the ICR, revealed that enzalutamide is the fourth new drug in just two years to be shown to extend the lives of men with prostate cancer.

'Advanced prostate cancer is extremely difficult to treat and it's taken a massive coordinated effort to finally bring new drugs into the pipeline, after decades where there were no options once old-style hormone treatment stopped working,' he said.

'What we're seeing now is an unprecedented period of success for prostate cancer research.'

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